Hermon French Class Finds Unlikely Pen Pal

Brooke Dupuy, a french teacher at Hermon High School has a letter written by a 12-year-old girl from northern France more than 60 years ago.It was given to her by a colleague last year, after it was found stuck in the pages of an old book.She couldn’t wait to show her students.”I started reading it to them and translating it and we all got excited because the date was 1949. It got more and more interesting because she talks about how her village was really bombarded in WWII and the aftermath,” said Dupuy.Dupuy’s husband is also from France and decided to do a bit of investigating.”In France, it’s typical when you sign a letter, you sign it with your name the place and so, luckily he found the town and also the region that she’s from,” said Dupuy.They contacted the mayor of the town. He found Madame Caron, who sent her new friends in America their own correspondence.”Then I got this letter from her. She says that she was honored, surprised, and moved, to read a letter written by herself at 12-years-old and she says that she thanks us from the bottom off her heart for having made the research to find her,” said Dupuy. It’s a French lesson Dupuy’s students can’t believe they get to be apart of.”It’s such a stroke of luck that we found this, it’s like, completely out of the blue. It just feels special that I get to participate in this situation and write back to her,” said Hermon senior August Eaton.”I couldn’t believe that she responded to it, so, then I was like, we have to write something back and say thank you for just responding,” said Hermon senior Alexa Hammond.They’re sending their new 75-year-old pen pal postcards and a box of treats from Maine.”It really touched her and really moved her, so that made me feel good that, you know, we went through all the work to find her and somewhere in a retirement home on the other side if the Atlantic, she’s probably kind of excited about this too,” said Dupuy.